Essays

I love to walk in the evening and to track the moon as it grows from a silver sliver low on the western horizon near sunset to an enormous golden globe rising on the darkened eastern horizon and then shrinking into nothing before the sliver reappears.

In 1983, my wife Debbie and I and our 2-year-old son Ben were living outside Minneapolis, Minnesota in Excelsior, a small, peaceful village on the meandering shore of Lake Minnetonka. The Cold War was raging.

The conversation really began when I asked where he was from. We were speeding down Broadway, deserted at 4:30 in the morning, on the way to John F. Kennedy International Airport. I was headed home and wondered where his home was originally. Through the opening in the barrier that separates passenger from driver in a yellow cab in New York City, he answered my question with a question: “Where do you think?”

Over the nearly fifteen years I’ve traveled the world as the founding Executive Director of the United Religions Initiative, I’ve had the privilege of being in the presence of many remarkable spiritual leaders – Baha’I, Brahma Kumari, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Indigenous, Jain, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Zoroastrian, and many other traditions.